Written by Joe Austin for FootballFancast.com: In the last few months, Harry Redknapp has bemoaned having to work on a small wage budget. He has said that limited money for player’s wages has prevented him from signing top players. Looking through the Tottenham squad, there are a few injury-prone players that rarely feature in the side, on high wages. Releasing Woodgate and King could free up some money, but do Tottenham have enough defenders to do this?
They would be left with central defenders Gallas, Dawson, Kaboul and Bassong. Of these, I see Kaboul as the man to take Tottenham to the top in the future.
There is a touch of the Gareth Bale to Younes Kaboul’s story. Kaboul came to Tottenham from Auxerre in 2007. He was young but showed he had raw ability. Due to the injuries of Dawson and King he started playing regularly in the first team. Just like Bale, Kaboul was not quite ready for this exposure, and made mistakes which affected his confidence. In doing so, Kaboul created many doubters in his potential. However, after a few seasons out of the limelight, Kaboul seems to have matured. He looks assured and confident and has played well this season.
Kaboul has been absent with a hip injury since January, but should be back to full fitness in the next few weeks. To some extent, the jury is still out on Kaboul, but personally I think he will develop into a very good player. Watching him at White Hart Lane against Inter Milan earlier this season, I was hugely impressed with him. He is remarkably quick and agile for such a big defender and teamed up impressively with the experienced William Gallas. He is good in the air, being strong and tall. He also weighs in with his fair share of goals, including the winner against Arsenal in November, lovely.
In his early Tottenham career Kaboul was prone to lapses in concentration. His mistakes against West Ham and Birmingham cost Tottenham points in 2007. This lack of composure resurfaced earlier this year. He head-butted Newcastle’s Cheik Tiote and was sent off, luckily it did not cost Tottenham points that day. However, in general, he has shown signs of maturity in recent months, his time at Portsmouth with Tony Adams has clearly benefited him.
He is as strong as anyone in the league and is one of the quickest defenders. With attributes likes this, he can be a top class defender. He probably still needs to work on his technique, and on his positioning, but if he continues to improve like he has done in the last year I think Tottenham will have a serious defender on their hands.
For the time being, Gallas and Dawson are a good partnership. But there is no reason why Kaboul cannot overtake Dawson, who still makes silly errors, in the next few years.
Tottenham would lack experience without the likes of King and Woodgate, especially as Gallas will be 34 next year and might play less. So maybe this summer is too soon to offload both but I don’t think Woodgate has a future at White Hart Lane. As for Dawson, he will need to rise to the challenge of leading the defence in future years, while Bassong must continue to improve. But my guess is that Kaboul will be running the show for Tottenham before too long.
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Hmmm. It would be great if releasing players could save money. All teams would do it. In reality you pay them off, and hence do not save money – in fact you pay more because you are usually paying for the replacement too. Either that or you wait until their deal runs out – which is I guess what you mean for King and Woody. The other interesting point is that you are talking about King and Woody being injury-prone, and that Kaboul should replace them yet….Kaboul himself is injured. He does get a few himself. This one looked quite innocuous, yet put him out for ages. Dawson on the other hand did have a long-term injury, but that was far from innocuous, and was a one-off, given his ever-present self last season. I fear Kaboul is injury prone too. Let’s not forget that King put in 20 apps last season…. Kaboul will be a utility player in my opinion, given his size, relative speed, and heads/strikes a ball well.
glad im not the only one who thinks kaboul is a class act, was really sad to see him go to portsmouth and equally happy when he returned, as you said he is tall, strong and quick and seems to be good with the ball at his feet. In the future him and dawson could form a partnership equal to ferdinand and vidic…mind you that is quite a big ‘if’ as both have flaws in their games but these are problems that can quite easily be ironed out with experience and training, exciting prospect…
I was very glad to see him back.. thought he was going to turn out great for a.n.other club.
He will be very good either in the centre or as right back.. just needs a run in one position and a bit of mentoring in said position. He could be one of our long term greats.
If all our young hopefulls are managed correctly we could have the next Manu type legacy.. akin to the Beckham, scoles young group.. 10 -15 years at the top, big stadium. It’s not that far fetched.
With Walker returning next season, and the potential retirements of both Ledders and Woody soon after, Kaboul will hopefully get a chance to stake his claim at centre-back alongside Daws, instead of being shuttled between the central defense and right-back positions. Gallas would ideally become a bench player in that case, someone to bring on if Daws is having one of his(now rarer) ‘mares at the back. Back four of BAE, Daws, Kaboul and Walker? I’d be quite happy with that. The only concern I foresee is that, once again, Daws will be left without an experienced head at the back to help him out, and I wonder how he’d cope.
Took me sometime to warm to him, as he was involved in some mistakes, but these got fewer as the season went on.
I think Gallas has earned the extension to his contract this season, but Kaboul is definitely one for the future.
Defence for me would be:
BAE Gallas (or another experienced CB) Dawson Kaboul
Walker and Corluka s the back-up RB’s. When Gallas ends his 2 years at Spurs, move Kaboul to CB with Dawson and put Walker RB, buy a new cover CB.
Kaboul is a gem.